Chapter 11

Sally, short even for girls her age, sat on the chair swinging her legs back and forth, enjoying her visit at Otterly’s house. Sally was spending the night, while her parents went to some work function. Her parents loved Otterly, although they didn’t quite know what to make of her parents. It seemed to Sally’s parents that talking to the Cages always ended with just standing around with nothing to say. That didn’t mean Sally’s parents were concerned about letting her spend the night at their house.

The fact was that none of the neighbors knew what to make of Otterly’s parents. That’s not to say that people distrusted them, quite the opposite was true. Their house was listed as a safe harbor. All a child had to do was step onto the property and yell ‘help,’ to summon a police officer. It didn’t matter if anyone was home or not.

With the surveillance system that the Cage family had around the house it was impossible for strangers to hang around the school without getting reported. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that the street was watched twenty-four hours a day by an ever vigilant watchdog. More than one convicted pedophile, who had chosen to park near the school, had discovered that when the police showed up with questions.

Sally took a sip of the cup of hot chocolate and sighed in contentment. Her mother wouldn’t let her have chocolate, and coming over to visit Otterly almost always included having a cup of hot chocolate. Otterly didn’t like the hot chocolate that came out of the coffeemaker, but Sally thought it was liquid gold.

“My parents think your parents are kind of weird,” Sally said.

Otterly knew that. Worried that Otterly might be suffering from neglect, Sally’s mother was always asking about life in the Cage household. It was well known that the Cages kept odd hours. Sometimes they were still in bed at five in the evening. She thought it was kind of strange that her parents trusted the computer to supervise Otterly even if that computer sounded like something out of a science fiction movie.

“What did they do now?” Otterly asked.

“They take the robotic dog for a walk around the block every evening,” Sally said.

It was kind of strange seeing them walking Rover on a leash with a robotic dog following along behind them. At least they didn’t have the robotic dog on a leash. That might have been a bit much.

“Mom felt that Digit would feel bad if they left him behind when they take Rover on his walk,” Otterly said.

“It’s a robotic dog,” Sally said. “Robots don’t feel anything.”

Otterly shrugged her shoulders. “I know that. Unfortunately, I don’t think Mom knows that. She loves that dog.”

“The other day she was stopping people to show them how it could fetch a ball,” Sally said.

Her parents had returned to the house after the demonstration talking about how Otterly’s parents were just a bit touched in the head. It just wasn’t normal for adults to be playing with toys like that and to boast about what their toy could do.

Otterly said, “I know. I taught Rover how to fetch and Mom decided that Digit needed to know how to do that too. It took her two months to program that behavior.”

“How long did it take you to teach Rover to fetch?”

“About two days,” Otterly answered.

“I’d say that Digit is a slow learner,” Sally said.

“Don’t say that around Mom,” Otterly cautioned.

“I’m not stupid.”

Otterly said, “Dad says that fetching something is actually one of the hardest things to program. I don’t know if that’s true, but his friend at the university was really impressed when he saw Digit fetch a ball.”

“That’s weird,” Sally said.

“It’s kind of difficult to know...”

Secretary said, “There’s a call for Sally Astor. Will she take it?”

Otterly signed, “Yes.”

“Sally?”

“Hello, Mom.”

“Are you settled in at the Cage house?” Sally’s mother asked.

“Yes, Mom,” Sally answered.

“We’re going to be at the restaurant for the next two hours. Have Otterly tell Mary Poppins that.”

Mary Poppins was the name Otterly’s parents had given the nanny subsystem that watched over Otterly even though it was always referred to as Mary. It wasn’t until recently, after watching the movie over at her Grandparent’s house, that Otterly had discovered her nanny was named after a fictional character. Although she had loved the movie, she had never decided if she was happy that her nanny was named after the main character or not.

While Otterly signed in the direction of the camera, Sally said, “She will.”

Otterly said, “I just told Secretary that you’re at the restaurant. You know that you can tell her that yourself.”

“I never know if it understands me,” Sally’s mother said.

“I know what you mean. The speech interface isn’t all that great. Mom and Dad keep saying they’re going to make their own, but they’ve never gotten around to it. They just use the one they bought from the store,” Otterly said.

“Are your parents there?” Sally’s mother asked.

“They’re walking the dogs,” Sally answered.

“You mean the dog and the robot,” Sally’s mother said.

Otterly said, “They should be back in five or ten minutes. Do you want them to call you?”

“No,” Sally’s mother said. “I’ll call them before we leave the restaurant.”

“I’ll let them know,” Otterly said.

“You girls be good. Sally, don’t drink any hot chocolate,” Sally’s mother said.

“Yes, Mom.”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Sally’s mother said.

“I know,” Sally said thinking they had this conversation when her mother had dropped her off at the house.

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

They heard the click of the phone being hung up. Secretary announced, “Call terminated.”

Both girls looked at each other and then giggled about the hot chocolate remark. Sally was sure that her mother had guessed that she was sitting there drinking hot chocolate.

Sally said, “My mom is kind of weird, too.”

“At least she makes cookies,” Otterly said.

“I like the store bought ones your mother gets better,” Sally said.

Otterly said, “That’s because your mother won’t make cookies with chocolate in them.”

“That’s true,” Sally said not denying why she preferred the cookies here than at home.

An alarm started sounding, causing both girls to jump. A flat robotic male voice said, “Process 1145 dumped core. Process 1146 dumped core. Process 1178 dumped core.”

Talking loudly to be heard over the alarm, Sally asked, “What’s that mean?”

“It’s not good,” Otterly said wishing the alarm, an irritating whoop-whoop noise, would shut off.

Otterly had no idea what a core dump was or why a process would dump a core. Essentially when a process (an executing program) enters into an error state and has to exit abnormally, the state of the executing program in memory is written to the disk. The file created is called a core dump reflecting the history of when computers used magnetic core memory. The purpose of the core dump is to allow those people who can read those kinds of files to determine why the program failed.

Otterly did know that her parents had gotten very excited, but not in a good way, on each of those occasions when the system announced that a process had dumped core. They would run off to the workshop to fix whatever was broken.

The rarity with which those kinds of announcements occurred let Otterly know that something was very wrong. In fact, she’d heard that message about processes dumping core only a couple of times in her entire life. Otterly looked around wondering what she was supposed to do.